WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- The United States no longer believes that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories are illegal, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday, in the latest pro-Zionist shift by Washington.
The statement puts the United States at odds with virtually all countries and UN Security Council resolutions and comes just as centrist Benny Gantz races to form a cabinet to replace PM Benjamin Netanyahu, a close ally of President Donald Trump.
Netanyahu on Tuesday hailed the U.S. announcement, but the Palestinians pledged new measures to oppose it.
Netanyahu visited the Gush Etzion settlement bloc south of Jerusalem Al-Quds, where he told settler leaders he was "very moved" by the announcement.
The decision is the latest in a series of pro-Israeli moves by Donald Trump's administration, including recognizing the occupied city of Jerusalem Al-Quds as Israel's capital and recognizing the occupying regime’s "sovereignty” over the Golan Heights, seized from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967.
More than 600,000 Zionists live in illegal settlements in east Jerusalem Al-Quds and the West Bank, alongside more than three million Palestinians.
The Arab League criticized Pompeo's announcement, calling it an "extremely adverse development."
The only two Arab states to have signed peace treaties with Israel -- Egypt and Jordan -- also sharply criticized the U.S. policy shift, with Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi warning of its "dangerous consequences".
The European Union reiterated that it considers all settlement activity "illegal under international law."
Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned that the U.S. decision to effectively back Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem Al-Quds would escalate tensions in the region.
Moscow’s stance is that such settlements on Palestinian territory are illegal under international law, it said.
The UN human rights office said that the settlements in occupied Palestinian territory remain in breach of international law.
"This changes nothing. President Trump can’t wipe away decades of established international law that settlements are a war crime,” Andrea Prasow, acting Washington director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
Philippe Nassif of Amnesty International said the construction and maintenance of the settlements breached international law and amounted to war crimes.
"Today, the United States government announced to the rest of the world that it believes the U.S. and Israel are above the law: that Israel can continue to violate international law and Palestinians’ human rights and the U.S. will firmly support it in doing so,” he said in a statement.
The direct impact on the ground may be limited but analysts say it will further embolden the settlement movement and may fend off potential legal moves against the occupying regime of Israel.
The Palestinian Authority -- which considers the U.S. biased and has rejected the Trump administration as a mediator if peace talks are ever revived -- denounced the latest decision.
Chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said the Palestinians would take a series of measures to oppose it. "We began deliberations in the UN to present a draft resolution in the Security Council," he said Tuesday. "We expect a (U.S.) veto but we will do it. Let the United States veto international law.”
The U.S. change of policy was widely seen as an attempt to change the legal context for a series of suits and complaints against the occupying regime of Israel.
The European Union's top court last week ruled that EU countries must identify products made in Zionist settlements on their labels.
Ofer Zalzberg, senior Middle East analyst with the International Crisis Group think tank, said the U.S. was trying to weaken the legal pressure on its ally.
"The Trump administration is trying to unravel international consensus on this issue of the illegality of settlements," Zalzberg said.
Zionist settlers, who overwhelmingly form part of Netanyahu's right-wing constituency, said the U.S. policy change paved the way for annexation of the settlements.
Erekat said it was only the latest move by the U.S. to try and force the Palestinians to capitulate and give up their claims to an independent state.
Until now, U.S. policy was based, at least in theory, on a legal opinion issued by the State Department in 1978 which said that establishing of settlements in the Palestinian territories occupied a decade earlier by the Zionist went against international law.
The Fourth Geneva Convention on the laws of war explicitly forbids moving civilians into occupied territories.
While the United States has generally vetoed Security Council measures critical of the occupying regime of Israel, previous president Barack Obama, exasperated with Netanyahu, in his final weeks in office allowed the passage of Resolution 2334 that called Israel's settlements a "flagrant violation" of international law.
Pompeo said that the United States was rejecting the Obama administration's approach and claimed that the move was not giving a green light to Israel to build more settlements.